Mrs. Hagel to Endorse Obama

By Shailagh Murray
Lilibet Hagel, the wife of GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel, is endorsing Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama this morning, an unusual public pronouncement for the low-profile Mississippi native and one that could stir speculation about her husband's presidential preference.

Hagel was expected to announce her support at a 10 a.m. news conference in Alexandria. She was scheduled to appear with Susan Eisenhower, the granddaughter of President Eisenhower and a prominent "Obamican," as the campaign calls its GOP supporters.

Lilibet Hagel, whose donations to the Obama campaign were made public by The Washington Post earlier this year, told the Associated Press in an interview that she has no idea whether her husband will endorse a candidate in the presidential race.

"You'll have to ask him," she said.

The senator, who is not running for re-election, is a close friend of Republican nominee John McCain, but the two Vietnam veterans have strong differences over the Iraq war.

Hagel also has formed a relationship with Obama, and traveled to Iraq and Afghanistan with his Foreign Relations Committee colleague this summer.

His wife said her pick is not personal. "The fact is, we're in two wars, two of the longest we've ever been in. We've run up a third of our nation's debt in just the past eight years. We're in the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression," said Lilibet Hagel. "This isn't anti-McCain. This is pro-Obama. I'm just convinced he's the right person."

I thought Obama really could have reached across the aisle if he had picked Hagel as his running mate. We need cohesiveness in this country after all this wrenching partisanship, especially with the turmoils our country is in. Hagel is a war hero, knows the military, and has shown that he follows issues and NOT always party line. I realize it's all water under the bridge and I think Biden would be an excellent VP and did tremendously in the VP debate (although it was a battle of wits with the unarmed when you come right down to it). But, Hagel would have been great, too, and helped brought the country together.

"A survey of academic economists by The Economist finds the majority—at times by overwhelming margins—believe Mr Obama has the superior economic plan, a firmer grasp of economics and will appoint better economic advisers."

Ok its true that Obama isnt that qualified to be president, but an even sadder fact is that people are even less enthusiastic about McCain, McBush, McRNC, so the GOP should of had a different nominee, then maybe they would of had a chance. A new national poll taken by watchdebate.com says that people preffer Huckabee/Palin08
5 to 1 over mccain palin. Matter of fact those polled liked Huckabee/mccain08 over McCain/Palin08 nearly 2 to 1. The problem isnt how bad Obama is, The problem is how bad of a candidate McCain is. See the Poll your self at http://www.mccanes.com/watchdebatevp.html

So no matter how much the GOP crys, and how desperate they get its their own fault for Pushing such a weak candidate. This will be the first time I ever vote Dem and I think Obama is a much stronger candidate then McCain. Funny though, You will never believe who was voted Debator of the year.http://www.watchdebate.com

Why is Senator Chuck Hagel (R) sleeping with a women who hates America and supports terrorists???

No, seriously. McCain, with his reckless and panic-induced pick of Palin as VP, embraced the worst aspects of the failed Republican Party. His move to the extreme evangelical Right after years of complaining about how they've poisoned American Politics, is disgusting.

More of the same old division, fear and hate that has made a mess of America.

There is a difference between attacking the character of a conservative journalist who criticizes the McCain ticket (Kathleen Parker) than in doing so to the spouse of a sitting southern GOP Senator.

She said it perfectly, it is not about being anti-McCain, it is about being pro-Obama. We need change and McCain's record, despite what he says, is not a record of change. 90% of the time he agreed with George W. Bush, and his policies. He is too old to change his stripes. McCain is another 4 years of George W. Bush.

While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75 year old rancher, who's hand was caught in the gate while working cattle, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to Obama and his bid to be our president.
The rancher said, 'Well, ya know, Obama is a 'Post Turtle".
Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a 'post turtle' was.
The old rancher said, 'When your driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a 'post turtle'.
The old rancher saw the puzzled look on the doctor's face so he continued to explain. 'You know he didn't get up there by himself, he doesn't belong up there, and he doesn't know what to do while he's up there, and you just wonder what kind of dumb a** put him up there to begin with.'

dbw1:
"do us a favor: list a major decision...just one....that Obama has ever had to make, that effected public policy of any sort."

I would say that any policy decision that Obama voted on, including decisions on Iraq, the budget, etc. are calculated decisions on his part and are an attempt to AFFECT public policy, even if he was not in a majority.

Furthermore, his grassroots campaign is definitely a statement of public policy. Judging by the way it is rocking voter registrations, I would say not only is it EFFECTIVE, it demonstrates the qualities of a leader much more in touch with the people rather than his seven homes, bogus economic advisers, and growing senility.

There are many good people amongst the republicans, the same way as there are many good people amongst the democrats. So what makes the democrats and their supporters different from the other side? The lack of pit-bulls and baracudas. One can accomplish more by being positive. One doesn't have to use character assassination of foes to make a point. Remember one half of a truth is equal to a whole lie. McCain sold his soul to the dark side of the GOP and he'll suffer because of that.
“What is uttered from the heart alone, Will win the hearts of others to your own.”
- Goethe

Ms. Hagel, way to go. Derail your husband's career and do something stupid at the same time. John McCain's campaign just released a statement signed by 100 economists denouncing the economic policies of Obama

Posted by: RUBY2 | October 7, 2008 11:34 AM

----------------------------------------------

Hey stupid..HE'S NOT RUNNING AGAIN FOR OFFICE!!
So i'm guessing he doesn't give a eff.

Since you so readily dismiss Palin's experience in making decisions as a governor as not enough to prepare her to be VP, and since you so readily embrace Obama's experience and readiness to be PRESIDENT, do us a favor: list a major decision...just one....that Obama has ever had to make, that effected public policy of any sort.

You'll excuse me of course if I don't hang around here waiting for your futile search to find one.....

maq1:
"Had McCain picked Chuck Hagel for his VP, I wouldve voted for him in a heartbeat."

And if Obama had picked a conservative as his VP, I would have given him a second look. So why should anyone be surprised that a liberal like yourself would be more inclined to vote for McCain if he had picked a liberal running-mate instead of a conservative running-mate?

I'm an Obama supporter and independent voter. Had McCain picked Chuck Hagel for his VP, I wouldve voted for him in a heartbeat. Instead he picked Palin, choosing to expose our country to immense danger in the event he wins the presidency. Did he not understand that we're on the verge of economic crisis or is he just out of touch? Did he not understand that we a former community organizer turned lawyer turned constitutional law professor turned state senator turned u.s. senator is far far better than a former news anchor turned beauty queen??? THE VP HAS TO BE READY FROM DAY ONE FOLKS!!!!!!!!

Just so I'm clear....it's "news" to the Post that a liberal wife of the most liberal Republican Senator is supporting Obama?

But it's not "news" to the Post that Obama's campaign is frantically returning tens of thousands of dollars of illegal donations, and the investigation of the millions raised through untraceable $200-or-less bundled donations is just beginning?

Hmmmmmm......should I be surprised at what the Post writers consider "news"?

The gop and it's followers rode w's wave all the way into the ground and now you want to cry foul. You should have gotten of w's koolaid a long time ago. You should have heeded the warning calls back in 2006 when the republicans lost the majority in congress. Instead you chose McCain and then your base forced him to run into their arms in order to get their support. Of course people bought that McSame bs. Now we are poised to elect an unknown liberal. Nice! I blame the GOP for not putting country first. If anybody propped up the dems it was your partisan bickering not the media. Now we are faced with a dem house, dem senate and dem president. That can't be good for the country. Thanks!

"The fact is, we're in two wars, two of the longest we've ever been in. We've run up a third of our nation's debt in just the past eight years. We're in the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression," said Lilibet Hagel. "This isn't anti-McCain. This is pro-Obama. I'm just convinced he's the right person."

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm a Republican too...but this isn't what the party stands for! If we go to war, we pay for the war. We're for tax cuts, when combined with a reduction in spending. We don't run up debts for our children to pay.

After Senator Obama wins, can we take back our party from the ones who run it now? I'd vote for Chuck Hagel in a heartbeat.

"The fact is, we're in two wars, two of the longest we've ever been in. We've run up a third of our nation's debt in just the past eight years. We're in the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression," said Lilibet Hagel. "This isn't anti-McCain. This is pro-Obama. I'm just convinced he's the right person."

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I'm a Republican too...but this isn't what the party stands for! If we go to war, we pay for the war. We're for tax cuts, when combined with a reduction in spending. We don't run up debts for our children to pay.

After Senator Obama wins, can we take back our party from the ones who run it now? I'd vote for Chuck Hagel in a heartbeat.

The republicans are nothing if not spiteful. Expect attacks on Ms. Hagel, not from the McCain camp, but from the RNC.

Man, talk about a perfect storm the republicans have created for themselves. Two long wars, unprecedented debt from a president who never vetoed a bill in his first term, and now the beginnings of Great-Depression-2, all in a short 8 years. Its down to the fanatical evangelical apacolyptic end-of-times deadenders left supporting McCain, and there is no need for Obama to go after their votes.

In the meantime, Palin is digging herself into a deep hole by showing her inability to tell the truth, her lack of knowlege and worse her belief she can fool everyone into thinking she is knowlegable, her support for a failed campaign, her willingness to be told what to do, and changing her mind about cooperating with the investigation about her possible abuse of power. She is toast and will be lucky to slink back to AK after the election and keeps her job as governor, even if she is not indicted. Talk about your 15 minutes of fame. Palin will have had a total of about 70 days of fame before we start to forget her name.

And poor George Bush will try to get speaking engagements starting in February in order to "refill the coffers" but will find no one wants to hire him to speak, except maybe Fox News who certainly owes him a debt of gratitude.

In other words, the US has finally woken up and is hearing what many of us have been saying for 8 years. A hard lesson to learn but a frustrating time for those of us who saw the destruction of our military, national morals and economy coming while Americans shopped and could have cared less. I don't see the republicans ever regaining any level of power for 20 years, which is how long it took them after they were at the helm before Great Depression-1.

What is about republicans and their desire to destroy the American economy? They certainly have shown a knack for sending it down a hole fast. Fool me once shame on you (1929). Fool me twice shame on me (2008). Either Americans need to never let republicans hold power by never voting for another republican again, or they need to stop complaining about the economy.

Ms. Hagel, way to go. Derail your husband's career and do something stupid at the same time. John McCain's campaign just released a statement signed by 100 economists denouncing the economic policies of Obama. Among those signing the statement were five Nobel Prize winners: Gary Becker, James Buchanan, Robert Mundell, Edward Prescott, and Vernon Smith.

The statement argues against Obama's tax and international trade polices, saying that his proposals would "reduce economic growth and decrease the number of jobs in America."

The economists also stated that the Obama policies could combine with the housing slump, the credit crunch and high energy prices to push the economy into a deep recession. "It was exactly such misguided tax hikes and protectionism, enacted when the U.S. economy was weak in the early 1930s, that greatly increased the severity of the Great Depression," the statement read.

So, while you are voting with your emotions (running scared), you should have been voting with your head. The truth is that Obama's economic policies would continue the Frank/Dobbs/Schuman/Pelosi Democrats' eoncomic direction and bankrupt America.

Hyuk hyuk hyuk... nice Republipuke talking points mwhoke. You guys are taking the easy way out, sitting on your fat a$$ and blogging. Which, among many, MANY other reasons is why you're going to get pounded into the ground like a tent peg on Nov. 4th.

Obama has more money, from more donors, and more volunteers, from more newly registered voters, than McCain. Why? Because people know what he stands for, what his programs are, and why he should be President.

A middle class tax cut, and an increase in taxes on corporations and the wealthy. An END to failed trickle-down economic policies of the last 8 years. The tax-cuts for the rich create jobs for the middle class approach FAILED. It doesn't work, and Obama's return to the Clinton policies WILL work.

A health care plan that adds 35 million Americans to the ranks people with health insurance. Right now, 46 million Americans don't have health insurance. 80% of them are in working families.

A foreign policy to get the Iraqi's to stand on their own two feet, and win their own damned war. We can't afford to spend $150 billion a year there!

A foreign policy to win the war in Afghanistan and the cross-border areas in Pakistan, which is where Al Queda is based. They're the terrorists who attacked America, they're the ones we must defeat.

A policy to regulate financial institutions, so those "predatory lenders" don't have money to lend!

A policy to fund public education, to improve our schools instead of abandoning them.

An environmental policy that recognizes human activity is causing global warming. That will stop polluting coal plants from shortening the lives of Americans (Duke v EPA, for example). One that protects endangered species, like polar bears (take THAT Sarah Palin).

An energy policy that highlights conservation and alternative energy sources such as clean coal and safe nuclear power. Imagine, if we had spent $150 billion a year over the last 5 years on alternative energy instead of tragic, useless war in Iraq!

There's more, lots more. Like putting appointees who believe in science in charge of government agencies like EPA, NOAA and NASA. People picked for their intelligence, knowledge, and skills rather than their ideological purity. A Justice Department dedicated to JUSTICE, and not a prosecutorial wing of the Republican Party.

Hyuk hyuk hyuk... nice Republipuke talking points mwhoke. You guys are taking the easy way out, sitting on your fat a$$ and blogging. Which, among many, MANY other reasons is why you're going to get pounded into the ground like a tent peg on Nov. 4th.

Obama has more money, from more donors, and more volunteers, from more newly registered voters, than McCain. Why? Because people know what he stands for, what his programs are, and why he should be President.

A middle class tax cut, and an increase in taxes on corporations and the wealthy. An END to failed trickle-down economic policies of the last 8 years. The tax-cuts for the rich create jobs for the middle class approach FAILED. It doesn't work, and Obama's return to the Clinton policies WILL work.

A health care plan that adds 35 million Americans to the ranks people with health insurance. Right now, 46 million Americans don't have health insurance. 80% of them are in working families.

A foreign policy to get the Iraqi's to stand on their own two feet, and win their own damned war. We can't afford to spend $150 billion a year there!

A foreign policy to win the war in Afghanistan and the cross-border areas in Pakistan, which is where Al Queda is based. They're the terrorists who attacked America, they're the ones we must defeat.

A policy to regulate financial institutions, so those "predatory lenders" don't have money to lend!

A policy to fund public education, to improve our schools instead of abandoning them.

An environmental policy that recognizes human activity is causing global warming. That will stop polluting coal plants from shortening the lives of Americans (Duke v EPA, for example). One that protects endangered species, like polar bears (take THAT Sarah Palin).

An energy policy that highlights conservation and alternative energy sources such as clean coal and safe nuclear power. Imagine, if we had spent $150 billion a year over the last 5 years on alternative energy instead of tragic, useless war in Iraq!

There's more, lots more. Like putting appointees who believe in science in charge of government agencies like EPA, NOAA and NASA. People picked for their intelligence, knowledge, and skills rather than their ideological purity. A Justice Department dedicated to JUSTICE, and not a prosecutorial wing of the Republican Party.

Paul Begala, in a shot on Meet the Press that sounds like something other than an offhand remark, suggests an Obama comeback to an expected McCain ad blitz on the Ayers relationship.

Obama, he was asked about this in a debate in the primaries with Hillary Clinton sitting there, and George Stephanopoulos of ABC asked him about it. He answered it, pointed out that the despicable acts this guy committed were committed when apparently Barack Obama was eight years old.

And I think Governor Palin here is making a strategic mistake. This guilt by association path is going to be trouble ultimately for the McCain campaign. You know, you can go back, I have written a book about McCain, I had a dozen researchers go through him, I didn't even put this in the book.

But John McCain sat on the board of a very right-wing organization, it was the U.S. Council for World Freedom, it was chaired by a guy named John Singlaub, who wound up involved in the Iran contra scandal. It was an ultra conservative, right-wing group.

The Anti-Defamation League, in 1981 when McCain was on the board, said this about this organization. It was affiliated with the World Anti-Communist League - the parent organization - which ADL said "has increasingly become a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact for extremists, racists and anti-Semites."

Now, that's not John McCain, I don't think he is that. But you know, the problem is that a lot of people know John McCain's record better than Governor Palin. And he does not want to play guilt by association or this thing could blow up in his face.

The guilt-by-association attacks on Obama are as much about tapping into a range of hazier doubts as they are about the details of any given charge, so I'm not sure they'd work on the better-known McCain.

There is no shortage of mud like this on both sides, though, from Ayers and Rezko to Gordon Liddy and the Alaska Independence Party.

_____________________

You can find more about the World Anti-Communist League on page 291 of my book, Dossier Secreto: Argentina's Desaparecidos and the Myth of the "Dirty War."

In it I point out that at the Fourth Congress of the Latin American Anti-Communist Confederation (CAL), a World Anti-Communist League affliliate, participants included Salvadoran death squad leader Roberto D'Aubuisson; his Guatemalan peer, the neofascist Mario Sandoval Alarcon, and a representative of the Alpha 66 Cuban-exile terrorist organization.

The CAL included a secret Mexican society called TECOS, whose dogma U.S. columnist Jack Anderson later exposed and which "made enemies of Jews, Jesuits, and communists--with a bit of medieval Nordic mythology thrown in for good measure. CAL-TECOS propaganda, published in their magazine, Replica, aired weird stores about Jews, witches, drug addicts and homosexuals taking over the Vatican. During his visit to Mexico, Pope John Paul II was elevated by the propagandists from a homosexual drug addict to the anti-Christ."

Replica had once listed Stefano Della Chiaie, the Italian narcoterrorist who worked with fugitive German Nazi Klaus Barbie in Bolivia, as one of its foreign correspondents.

WASHINGTON (AP) — GOP presidential nominee John McCain has past connections to a private group that supplied aid to guerrillas seeking to overthrow the leftist government of Nicaragua in the Iran-Contra affair.

McCain's ties are facing renewed scrutiny after his campaign criticized Barack Obama for his link to a former radical who engaged in violent acts 40 years ago.

The U.S. Council for World Freedom was part of an international organization linked to former Nazi collaborators and ultra-right-wing death squads in Central America. The group was dedicated to stamping out communism around the globe.

The council's founder, retired Army Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, said McCain became associated with the organization in the early 1980s as McCain was launching his political career in Arizona. Singlaub said McCain was a supporter but not an active member in the group.

"McCain was a new guy on the block learning the ropes," Singlaub told The Associated Press in an interview. "I think I met him in the Washington area when he was just a new congressman. We had McCain on the board to make him feel like he wasn't left out. It looks good to have names on a letterhead who are well-known and appreciated.

"I don't recall talking to McCain at all on the work of the group," Singlaub said.

The renewed attention over McCain's association with Singlaub's group comes as McCain's campaign steps up criticism of Obama's dealings with William Ayers, a college professor who co-founded the Weather Underground and years later worked on education reform in Chicago alongside Obama. Ayers held a meet-the-candidate event at his home when Obama first ran for public office in the mid-1990s.

Obama was roughly 8 years old when Ayers, now at the University of Illinois at Chicago, was working with the Weather Underground, which took responsibility for bombings that included nonfatal blasts at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol. McCain's vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, has said that Obama "pals around with terrorists."

In McCain's case, Singlaub knew McCain's father, a Navy admiral who had sought Singlaub's counsel when McCain, a Navy pilot, became a prisoner of war and spent 5 1/2 years in North Vietnamese hands.

"John's father asked me for advice about what he ought to do now that his son had been shot down and captured," Singlaub recalled in one of two recent interviews. "I said, 'As long as you don't give any impression that you care more about him than you care about any of the other prisoners, he won't be treated any differently.'"

Covert arms shipments to the rebels called Contras, financed in part by secret arms sales to Iran, became known as the Iran-Contra affair. They proved to be the undoing of Singlaub's council.

In 1987, the Internal Revenue Service withdrew the tax-exempt status of Singlaub's group because of its activities on behalf of the Contras.

Elected to the House in 1982 and at a time when he was on the board of Singlaub's council, McCain was among Republicans on Capitol Hill expressing support for the Contras, a CIA-organized guerrilla force in Central America. In 1984, Congress cut off CIA funds for the Contras.

Months before the cutoff, top Reagan administration officials ramped up a secret White House-directed supply network and put National Security Council aide Oliver North in charge of running it. The goal was to keep the Contras operational until Congress could be persuaded to resume CIA funding.

Singlaub's private group became the public cover for the White House operation.

Secretly, Singlaub worked with North in an effort to raise millions of dollars from foreign governments.

McCain has said previously he resigned from the council in 1984 and asked in 1986 to have his name removed from the group's letterhead.

"I didn't know whether (the group's activity) was legal or illegal, but I didn't think I wanted to be associated with them," McCain said in a newspaper interview in 1986.

Singlaub does not recall any McCain resignation in 1984 or May 1986. Nor does Joyce Downey, who oversaw the group's day-to-day activities.

"That's a surprise to me," Singlaub said. "This is the first time I've ever heard that. There may have been someone in his office communicating with our office."

"I don't ever remember hearing about his resigning, but I really wasn't worried about that part of our activities, a housekeeping thing," said Singlaub. "If he didn't want to be on the board that's OK. It wasn't as if he had been active participant and we were going to miss his help. He had no active interest. He certainly supported us."

....."The Candidate does not speak for the Campaign, or the economy, or healthcare, or unemployment or the energy crisis...just more lies....."

It is okay Chuck Hagel. You are not the only Republican declaring yourself "undecided" less than 30 days before election. This does not bold well for McCain when you have a significant number of Republicans (the moderate ones) not willing to say they support McCain.

"The fact is, we're in two wars, two of the longest we've ever been in. We've run up a third of our nation's debt in just the past eight years. We're in the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression," said Lilibet Hagel. "This isn't anti-McCain. This is pro-Obama. I'm just convinced he's the right person."

A large number of voters have made the same assessment. The Republican slide is down to the base.

Now watch the lynching begin. She is allowed to have her opinion and vote her choice but the Rovians running the McPalin campaign will call her names, send her nasty notes, maybe even suggest she is gay. It's the GOP way, you don't support us we eat you alive. GOP should stand for "Grossly Opportunistic Peons" since they make me ill with their hate and my way or no way idea. Wake up fools, we all have a RIGHT to disagree. Go on now, attack, its not like you can run on your accomplishments for the last decade.

I would vote for Barack Obama if I knew who he was and what he stands for!

I recall what the Reverend Jeremiah Wright said about Senator Obama at the National Press Club earlier this summer. "Barack Obama is a politician and he will say whatever he has too to get elected". That statement came from someone Obama indicated was one of his mentor's for over twenty years and therefore I believe knows him well.

Maybe tonight we will get some answers from Obama and I can make up my mind.

Walking along the grounds at Fort McNair, McCain runs into John Dramesi, an Air Force lieutenant colonel who was also imprisoned and tortured in Vietnam.

McCain is studying at the National War College, a prestigious graduate program he had to pull strings with the Secretary of the Navy to get into. Dramesi is enrolled, on his own merit, at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in the building next door.

There’s a distance between the two men that belies their shared experience in North Vietnam — call it an honor gap. Like many American POWs, McCain broke down under torture and offered a “confession” to his North Vietnamese captors. Dramesi, in contrast, attempted two daring escapes. For the second he was brutalized for a month with daily torture sessions that nearly killed him. His partner in the escape, Lt. Col. Ed Atterberry, didn’t survive the mistreatment. But Dramesi never said a disloyal word, and for his heroism was awarded two Air Force Crosses, one of the service’s highest distinctions. McCain would later hail him as “one of the toughest guys I’ve ever met.”

On the grounds between the two brick colleges, the chitchat between the scion of four-star admirals and the son of a prizefighter turns to their academic travels; both colleges sponsor a trip abroad for young officers to network with military and political leaders in a distant corner of the globe.

“It’s a place we’re probably going to have some problems,” Dramesi says.

“Why? Where are you going to, John?”

“Oh, I’m going to Rio.”

“What the hell are you going to Rio for?”

McCain, a married father of three, shrugs.

“I got a better chance of getting laid.”

Dramesi, who went on to serve as chief war planner for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and commander of a wing of the Strategic Air Command, was not surprised. “McCain says his life changed while he was in Vietnam, and he is now a different man,” Dramesi says today. “But he’s still the undisciplined, spoiled brat that he was when he went in.”